The invention refers to a unit for the production of structured textile velour needle-bonded fabric webs from a pre-needled fleece of staple fibers, which is made up of a fleece laying apparatus, a pre-needling machine and a velour needling machine. Units of this mentioned type are already known. The most problematic component of such units is the velour needling machine of the conventional type. The velour needle-bonded webs produced with the known units have shortcomings in numerous aspects. In particular, they do not permit evenness and free-orientation of the surface of the fabric. Furthermore, the strength of the needle-bonded web is not sufficient, and finally the hitherto used units have a relatively high energy consumption, which again results in the fibers being more or less severely damaged or ruptured.
For pre-needling webs of fleeces made up of several layers it has been suggested to use a pre-needling machine where the needle stitch base is an endless delivery belt equipped with bristles. Such a machine however does not function fully satisfactorily as the needling is relatively uneven and in particular streakiness occurs which is caused through the type of construction. Thus such a machine is not usable as a velour needling machine.
The invention is based on the task of providing a unit for producing structured textile velour needle-bonded webs with as low mass per unit area as possible, which is characterized by great uniformity and free-orientation of the surface of the fabric as well as by high strength of the needle-bonded web, and which requires as low an energy consumption as possible for operation. For solving this task the invention suggests forming the unit in question in such a way that at least the velour needling machine is equipped with an endless brush belt supporting the fleece to be needled and acting as needle stitch base, which is composed of a multitude of brush plates carrying the bristle clusters, whose outer edges are formed in a zig-zag manner and in such a way that the edges of adjacent brush plates respectively interlock in such a way that the spacing of the bristle clusters is the same along the outer edges as the spacing in the inner area of the brush plates, that the bristles of the bristle clusters are trimmed in a conical or wedge-shaped manner on their free ends, that the holding -down plate lies on the fiber fleece web and is pressed down on it and that for the three-dimensional structuring of the pre-needled fiber fleece crown needles are used.
Advantageously, the fleece needling machine has at least two parallel arranged needle beams, wherein either both needle beams are driven by a common drive mechanism or each needle beam is associated to its own drive mechanism so that the working strokes are staggered.
It is also advantageous to place a fiber fleece drafting means between the pre-needling machine and the velour needling machine, this being particularly considered if the end product is to further undergo any deformation process through needle punching or embossing. Through the drafting of the fleece, a fiber reorientation is reached aimed at giving the material enhanced isotropic and elastic properties.
Even though the velour needling machine according to the invention is particularly suited for bringing about the three-dimensional structuring of the originally plain fiber fleece, in order to reach the desired uniform product with homogeneous, completely orientation-free pile and high strength, the pre-needling machine can also advantageously be formed in the same manner as the velour needling machine, without it however having crown needles. The needle stitch base, in the form of an endless brush belt, evenly equipped with bristles over the entire surface, offers excellent conditions for a basically uniform homogeneous needling of the fleece of the web to provide a preneedled fleece of particularly good uniformity as never achieved before . Here the quality of the end product can be still further improved particularly regarding its strength in the final condition.
FIGS. 1-3 of the drawings show a preferred embodiment of the subject matter of the invention which is described in greater detail below.